Lighters aloft, mates on shoulders – it’s a festival classic, and that belted-out “babe, you look so cool” is the perfect dose of semi-ironic teenage sentiment that Healy has become renowned for. Complete with aHollywood-ready music video, it paints a picture of young love that’s as achingly sincere as teenage feelings themselves. TCĪnother bout of balladry from the depths of Healy’s emo heart, ‘Robbers’ is The 1975’s purest tear-jerker. Resolutely present-day in its lyrical touchpoints ( “I’m looking through you while you’re looking through your phone” ), it’s the perfect exemplar of The 1975’s ability to turn well-worn tropes like love, sex, death and drugs, and drag them away from longstanding cliches. The moment that made most first-album-naysayers perk up and pay attention, ‘Somebody Else’ is a heartbreak hit like few others. Reflecting with admirable honesty, Matty is inspired and defiant in the face of adversity (“ T here’s no point in buying concrete shoes, I refuse ”), but it’s the weighty sucker-punch in the middle-eight that makes for the song’s biggest tearjerker: “ If you can’t survive, just try ”. Uniting with David Campbell, the musician who arranged the strings on The Goo Goo Dolls mammoth ‘Iris’, the finale to ‘A Brief Inquiry…’ is a masterpiece in its own right. Sounding like a lost classic from The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’ or Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’, this one is the band at their most grandiose and ambitious. It’s not hard to see why it’s such a popular choice, though – doomy, gloomy and powerful, it’s the perfect distillation of early 1975’s most gothic tendencies. It’s never been played live – Matty’s not sure he could do it justice, or handle it emotionally, apparently. There was even a petition to get it added.
‘Antichrist’ has become something of an albatross for the band, you see – every single day, poor Healy opens up his Twitter notifications to hundreds of requests for the band to add it to their setlist.
Built on a spritely pop riff, with a soaring and optimistic chorus, it takes what ought to be a tough listen and spins it into a miraculous rebirth. The heavy subject matter hasn’t filtered through to the composition, mind. This song isn’t about that trusty steed instead Healy humanises his greatest foe and reflects on his previous dependency, but with an eye to the future. The stint paid off, with a lasting friendship being built between himself and a key part of his time there – a therapy horse named Favor. After battling addiction, the lead singer spent time in a rehabilitation clinic in the Bahamas to clean up before writing their third album. The time between ‘I Like It When You Sleep…’ and ‘A Brief Inquiry…’ was revelatory for Matty and the band. TCĨ) ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’ As moreish as the “straight lines that unwind you” it’s written about (don’t do drugs, kids), like few of the Manchester band’s songs since, ‘Milk’ is a straightforward pop-rock hit – and all the better for it. Like many of The 1975’s best early bangers, it’s about drugs and shagging, but in ‘Milk’ those well-trodden topics are handled with a front-and-centre pop sensibility. Tagged onto the end of ‘You’ as a hidden bonus track ( remember those? ), ‘Milk’ quickly became another unlikely fan favourite.
0 kommentar(er)
